Learylvr.
macrumors regular
The point is maybe I'm out of town right now... See how that makes sense? I can't do a speed test IF I'm not in Austin where I live... Pretty basic
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Carrier Sprint really doesn't throttle?
- Thread starter ynotrhyme
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The point is maybe I'm out of town right now... See how that makes sense? I can't do a speed test IF I'm not in Austin where I live... Pretty basic
scaredpoet
macrumors 604
Not really, since the point of a nationwide network is to cover you everywhere, but okay. *shrug*
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
It's called TEP (Total Equipment Protection) and it applies only to the phones you pay for.
Sprint will take care of you in the first year of warranty (or however long the manufacturer warranty is) no questions asked. But you don't need TEP for that because Sprint is just acting as the middleman.
After the warranty expires…if you have TEP, you deal with Asurion through Sprint. You will pay a deductible. You file a claim with Sprint/Asurion, they replace the phone.
Now. Some things to consider. You don't need TEP under the first warranty period, unless you want to cover loss or theft. After that first period though don't expect Sprint/Asurion to do you any favors. It may be smooth, it may not. It's been smooth for me in the past, but Asurion has a history of not being customer friendly.
In regards to the iPhone, you can expect than any Asurion replacement will be a refurb. And not the good kind of Apple refurb. Asurion uses third partys to do this and they do not always use genuine Apple parts.
I know of a few people that took their Asurion replacement to Apple and were refused service because of that.
My suggestion to you would be to get Applecare+ AND TEP. Deal with Apple directly for any service issues. TEP will cover you if the phone is lost or stolen and if you continue to pay it after AC+ expires then you will still have coverage. At that point it's not likely to matter so much about any refurb replacements. And if things get expensive, Apple always has it's OoW replacement charge.
Learylvr.
macrumors regular
Nationwide coverage sure I get that, but I wasn't talking of nationwide coverage, I said Austin, not Sprint LTE is great nation wide. It's not, and if you go to a small west Texas town, that doesn't offer LTE.. There is no point in doing a LTE test. I never said how great it was nation wide, because pretty much, I bet it's awful. Where in my post did I say it's great nation wide??? I didn't, did I? I said Austin... There fore that's where I'd do my LTE test. Geeze like to argue much?? I'm not about to defend Sprint, in my original post I was saying how awful Sprint is without LTE. Without LTE, Sprint in "my area" (see how I did that again) is not even 3G .
ET iPhone Home
macrumors 68040
Maybe, it's because their customers are fleeing and there is no one to throttle.
Learylvr.
macrumors regular
Lol... Leave Sprint customers... I'd be ok, better LTE for me.. I decided after I got the 5s last year if Sprint didn't have LTE by December 2013 id bail, 3G is a joke... And they finally brought LTE in December 2013. I've stayed only because it works in my area and where I go. Unlimited data is worthless if you only get 3G ... Sprints 3G wasn't even close to what 3G was supposed to be.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
I made that same decision, only I gave Sprint two years from iPhone 5 launch day (September 21, 2012).
Two years are past and while LTE is here, in the places I use it it's often slower than 3G. This 15 year customer will be leaving next year.
Applejuiced
macrumors Westmere
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
ROTFLMFAO!!!
Yeah, me too. But I am seriously frustrated that I give these guys $211 a month and most of my data use is on WiFi! And when I do need LTE I'm often in a place were it's either unreliable or just not available. And 3G just no.
What am I paying Sprint for? If all I was using my iPhone for was texting and calling I could find some prepaid crap flip phone somewhere and pay less than $40 a month. So, I'm in this plan for data. Which I am not getting. I already pay Cox over $200 a month for my home cable/internet. And then I pay Sprint to use that. With an unlimited data plan.
Yes, yes, it will get better, I know. But I'm choosing to be somewhere else when that happens.
I'm seeing this like the time we moved to Phoenix 14 years ago. We came from a rural backwards town in California that I'd lived in for 20 years. I hated that place because anytime you wanted to do something or go somplace you had to leave the area because nothing was available. So, we left.
A month or so after we left, that town exploded with commerce and new people moving in. All of a sudden, three Starbucks when there was none. A Wal-mart and a Home Depot and my God, actual grocery stores instead of markets! Major chain restaurants!
If I was to live there today, I'd be fine. But now I hate the place even more because this happened only shortly after we left. However, Phoenix all the way around is STILL better for what I want/need than even that upgraded California town.
This is what's going to happen with Sprint. They will finally get Phoenix set and it will be good. But I will be on T-Mobile and all the way around it will be better to have left Sprint.
Applejuiced
macrumors Westmere
Cant blame you bud.
What carrier you're thinking on going with?
How's Tmobile in your area? Their LTE is pretty decent and HSPA+ speeds are good along with their pricing.
Or you could also go with an AT&T MVNO to save some money but not sure if those can get access to AT&T LTE.
What carrier you're thinking on going with?
How's Tmobile in your area? Their LTE is pretty decent and HSPA+ speeds are good along with their pricing.
Or you could also go with an AT&T MVNO to save some money but not sure if those can get access to AT&T LTE.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
T-Mobile. We are used to unlimited and T-Mobile is the only other carrier that offers it. It's probably one of their more expensive plans, but the thing about that is that it's cheaper than what I am paying now.
Rootmetrics has T-Mobile winning the Phoenix market in speed and coverage for the last few quarters. To be fair, it was a tie with AT&T, but Sprint was still at the bottom. My understanding is also that this seems to be like a "home" market or something for T-Mobile so their coverage/service are better here. So, all the way around a win/win for us.
We are urbanites and rarely leave the area. Maybe once a year. So any lack of coverage T-Mobile may have outside metro areas is not going to affect us in any way.
AT&T and Verizon are not options for us. No unlimited data and to get anything even remotely close to what we have now the cost would be astronomical. If those were truly our only other choices I'd just suck it up and stay on Sprint.
Sure, we could learn like many customers have to watch our data, but we've never had to do that since we got a data plan six years ago and I don't feel like doing it now. Which means all the way around - T-Mobile.
Learylvr.
macrumors regular
You've stuck it out way longer than I would've ..
I have been with Sprint longer than I thought ..
15 years as well.. We must be nuts! If I didn't have LTE speeds I do I would've bailed by now. In the real world Sprints 3G is way to slow to use, can't even open a map on it
I have been with Sprint longer than I thought ..
15 years as well.. We must be nuts! If I didn't have LTE speeds I do I would've bailed by now. In the real world Sprints 3G is way to slow to use, can't even open a map on it
Applejuiced
macrumors Westmere
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
See that's the thing! If I got around 5-8mbps down I would not be having this conversation. But my standard speeds are somewhere between 0.5 and 2.5mbps. That might even be fine if I could stream music consistently and use my data when I'm out.You've stuck it out way longer than I would've ..
But the updating of the towers is so wacked that I don't have that at home or work and there is one tower on the way to work that's still not been ugraded. Now, if I venture outside of my normal places I can find awesome pockets of damn good LTE. But that's outside of where I am the most. So, it does me no good!
Just waiting for our tax refund check and we will be gone.
----------
Yeah, it seems to be more and more a good choice every day.
aliensporebomb
macrumors 68000
Yep...
I can understand that it's frustrating. Part of the problem is when they originally did their LTE planning they didn't take into account that technology is a moving target. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.
A huge problem was getting backhaul to the Sprint sites - I'm absolutely sure a lot of that waiting was competitors dragging their heels in getting fiber backhaul to the sites. I saw one site wait almost 18 months for backhaul and all the other equipment was there and ready to go.
But once the backhaul was there they found some weirdnesses: one problem was when your phone would go from a modern LTE site (Samsung, Ericsson, Huawei or Alcatel/Lucent equipment) and try to handoff to another cell running legacy Motorola equipment your handset would hang up! Luckily that's mostly gone now since lots of that legacy stuff is just gone and recycled.
But, then another problem arose - by the time they were 65-70% into their LTE rollout the trend of tri-band handsets hit the market and literally every tower needed to be modified for what is known as "circuit switched fallback mode".
What's circuit switched fallback mode? It means that when you make a voice phone call your handset drops out of LTE and goes back to 3G for the duration of the phone call and then when the call is done the handset goes back to LTE.
Why? Because the technology of voice-over-lte (or VoLTE) isn't quite there yet and there are no handsets that really take advantage of it yet.
So we're dealing with constantly evolving technologies piggybacking onto a network that's completely being rebuilt from scratch and as it's being rebuilt the design is changed or modified several times.
But yeah, I'd be mad too. I'm lucky in that I'm located in the "Silicon Prairie". Lots of tech companies here and they all the towers that went up seemed to cluster around here.
I can understand that it's frustrating. Part of the problem is when they originally did their LTE planning they didn't take into account that technology is a moving target. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.
A huge problem was getting backhaul to the Sprint sites - I'm absolutely sure a lot of that waiting was competitors dragging their heels in getting fiber backhaul to the sites. I saw one site wait almost 18 months for backhaul and all the other equipment was there and ready to go.
But once the backhaul was there they found some weirdnesses: one problem was when your phone would go from a modern LTE site (Samsung, Ericsson, Huawei or Alcatel/Lucent equipment) and try to handoff to another cell running legacy Motorola equipment your handset would hang up! Luckily that's mostly gone now since lots of that legacy stuff is just gone and recycled.
But, then another problem arose - by the time they were 65-70% into their LTE rollout the trend of tri-band handsets hit the market and literally every tower needed to be modified for what is known as "circuit switched fallback mode".
What's circuit switched fallback mode? It means that when you make a voice phone call your handset drops out of LTE and goes back to 3G for the duration of the phone call and then when the call is done the handset goes back to LTE.
Why? Because the technology of voice-over-lte (or VoLTE) isn't quite there yet and there are no handsets that really take advantage of it yet.
So we're dealing with constantly evolving technologies piggybacking onto a network that's completely being rebuilt from scratch and as it's being rebuilt the design is changed or modified several times.
But yeah, I'd be mad too. I'm lucky in that I'm located in the "Silicon Prairie". Lots of tech companies here and they all the towers that went up seemed to cluster around here.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
LOL! Sounds like maybe you have either been to or are a member of s4gru.com. That's where I get a lot of my information from.
In regards to backhaul, that's actually what the major hold up in PHX is. Sprint went with a JIT (Just In Time) backhaul plan rather than paying for it up front. Consequently, when they are ready for fiber, it's not there because of the market conditions and other vendors. So, Sprint has to wait. That JIT plan has been one of the bigger failures of the rollout.
Secondly, and I do fault Sprint for this. When they signed all the contracts Sprint did not include any penalties for finishing late, nor did they include any incentives for finishing early. So, they are very much at the mercy of the vendors.
Some of the vendors, and I know this for a fact, have detailed their least experienced crews to do all their Sprint jobs. Why? Because it gets those crews experience and there is no penalty for how slow or screwed up the work gets done. If the crew has to redo it, then the crew has to redo it and Sprint has no recourse.
As to triband, yes, that added to the workload, but that is essentially NV 2.0. NV 1.0 was the entire ripping out of the old network equipment and replacement while NV 2.0 is upgrades to 1.0 and repurposing of Clearwire and Nextel towers to support triband (Spark). That of course is taking a bit longer because all the business merger deals did not finalize until the middle of this year.
I have heard as well about the fallback and other issues you mention. Mainly that's happening with the new triband devices though. Most dual or single band phones aren't experiencing this.
GreenPixel
macrumors regular
You will LOVE T-Mobile. I am in the opposite boat as you. T-Mobile is amazing in major metro areas. Flat out amazing. However, I travel SO much and on the road I never seem to have a signal. Meanwhile my wife gets a solid connection constantly with her Sprint iPhone 6 and my 5s is just sitting there useless. So I'll be switching from T-Mobile to Sprint. Not what I want to do, but I want a connection when traveling. Unfortunately, Sprint Spark doesn't really seem to be working in my city, but I'll just have to deal. Like you, I refuse anything other than an unlimited plan. So Sprint it is.